"Sources with first-hand experience of Microsoft's next generation console have told us that although the next Xbox will be absolutely committed to online functionality, games will still be made available to purchase in physical form. Next Xbox games will be manufactured on 50GB-capacity Blu-ray discs, Microsoft having conceded defeat to Sony following its ill-fated backing of the HD-DVD format. It is believed that games purchased on disc will ship with activation codes, and will have no value beyond the initial user." Crap like this should be illegal. If I can't buy second-hand games at my local favourite game store, Microsoft can shove this new Xbox where the sun don't shine. Which it obviously doesn't do in Redmond if they can come up with this kind of user-hostile bullshit. You can pretty much guarantee that they have made a silent agreement with Sony to implement similar anti-user feature on the next Playstation.

So, yes, the Virtual Console is a big part of the digital downloads for the Wii. Far from being "emulators", the games download as individual channels that are self contained. As an example, we have "Blades of Steel" for the NES which we got free because we paid for the Internet Channel with star points and then Nintendo made it free. It acts like it's own Wii channel, it lives on the home screen and all it does is run the game as if it were a native app. We also have the Homebrew NES and SNES emulator channels installed, and they are a completely different kettle of fish (and Blades of steel runs quite differently on the NES channel too.)

The only time game companies have ever given a shit about emulators in my memory was Bleem when the PS1 was at its height of success.

Nintendo still regularly DMCA take down Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong games for the NES and SNES. I doubt they care about games they published for other developers though.